FIFA Announces World Cup Hosts

FIFA announced today that the 2018 and 2022 World Cups would be held in Russia and Qatar, respectively.  Russia beat out England and collaborative hosting bids from Spain-Portugal and Holland-Belguim in today’s vote at the FIFA headquarters in Switzerland.

Qatar won the rights to host the 2022 tourney against the bids of the USA, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

Being the biggest sports tournament in the world, the World Cup brings in millions of people and dollars worth of tourism.  The FIFA World Cup has never been in Eastern Europe or the Middle East before, so these tournaments will be turning points in soccer history.

The big question is: what will the new vuvuzela be?  My vote is for the cowbell or the melodica.  That's only because the digurido is too big.

Top 5 Words of 2010

Did you know what a vuvuzela was last year?  How about a spillcam?  These are two of the top used words of the last year, according to the Global Language Monitor.  The GLM, which gathers information, based upon social media and news trends, put out the list recently, which also included "refudiate," a conflation of "refute" and "repudiate" used by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; “guido,” and “Tea Party.”  The list incites an interesting visual.  Couldn't you just see Snooki enjoying tea with Palin, talking about international affairs and the oil spill?  No?  Alright.

CNN says: The top words this year come from the World Cup, an environmental disaster, and political malapropisms.  Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor was quoted, “This is fitting for a relentlessly growing global language that is being taken up by thousands of new speakers each and every day.”

I’m not sure whether there is much of a method to this, or if they were simply monitoring the Trending Topics on Twitter for a year, but I appreciate a good algorithm explaining semantics.  Language is fueled by communication, and as I have stressed: communication is key for just about… anything.

-@StanaCardSara